The Three Rules of Nival

The new Heroes games produced by Ubisoft. Please specify which game you are referring to in your post.
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Alamar
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Unread postby Alamar » 10 Dec 2006, 16:36

DaemianLucifer wrote:
Mytical wrote:As for not buying, well as I said I am giving them the benifit of the doubt until h6
No youre not,you got the expansion for free :devil:
I think that it's reasonable to wait and decide until H6 esp. if you basically think the game is ok / pretty good.

Hopefully others will cut me some slack and say that it is reasonable [for me] not to buy any expansions until I see an AI with tweaks that I feel shows that UBI / Nival actually gives a darn.

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Unread postby ThunderTitan » 10 Dec 2006, 17:03

Alamar wrote:if you basically think the game is ok
See, that really depends with what you compare it.
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Caradoc
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Unread postby Caradoc » 11 Dec 2006, 05:57

Cut scenes and vocals are a nice addition to the game, but not an intrinsic part of it. The more time and resources you put into them, the less you have for other parts of the game. I'm glad they could do as well as they have, all things considered.

And let's remember that fantasy art in general only rarely approaches what might be considered fine art. State of the art, million dollar cartoons like Shrek are still not comparable to live action. The Heroes V cut scenes are superior to most games and certainly good enough for a strategy game. The voice acting is hokey, but the overacting suits the personalities of the characters they are playing.
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Unread postby Demiurg » 11 Dec 2006, 09:02

Caradoc wrote:Cut scenes and vocals are a nice addition to the game, but not an intrinsic part of it.
I get your point, but if the developer chooses to convey the story and the presentation of characters via cut scenes/voice acting, I think they become an intrinsic part of the game. (At least the storydriven campaign in this case - multiplayer scenarios are another thing.) Personally I like the graphics in the cutscenes and also the general goofiness, which seems to suit the HoMM universe well, but the voice acting and the writing fail to draw me into the story and make me care about the characters.

For example, why on earth does Isabel buy Markal's offer to raise Nicolai? It's so obviously a very bad idea. The only reason I can think of is that his death has driven Isabel close to insanity - but the game fails to describe her mental state and/or reasons convincingly to me, leaving me with the feeling that she's just nuts. And why should I care about a nutty girl. A more concrete example: in the cutscene when he is raised, she seems to go insane - but it's not her acting/what she says that tells me so, but Markal's comments afterwards.

So the story here isn't so bad in itself. If it was convincingly told, I would be much more emotionally involved and understanding. But as it stands now, it just feels haphazard and it's actually making me more detached from the characters rather than the opposite.

It is a magic thing when game developers succeed in making you care about some pixels on the screen. At the end of Baldur's Gate 2, I was really attached to everybody in the team. Or take the little nuisance Deekin in Neverwinter Nights - because of the perfect choice for his voice and a lovingly presentation of him via writing, I would never choose any other henchman. In fact, when I saw him in NWN2, it was almost like seeing an old friend. A rather amazing achievement for a game. HoMM V, however, really fails to deliver on this point.

It's really the 101 of story telling: Why should I care?

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Unread postby ThunderTitan » 11 Dec 2006, 12:41

Caradoc wrote:The Heroes V cut scenes are superior to most games and certainly good enough for a strategy game. The voice acting is hokey, but the overacting suits the personalities of the characters they are playing.
I dont even want to know what you've played. And yes, the overacting suits a bunch of retards very well. :disagree:
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Unread postby DaemianLucifer » 11 Dec 2006, 16:41

Caradoc wrote:The Heroes V cut scenes are superior to most games and certainly good enough for a strategy game.
You dont honestly believe that?The cut scenes in HV are the same as cutscenes in EE.Oh,wait,theyre not.The cutscenes in EE had better dialogues and voice acting.But the same no lip sinc,the same blocky hands,only the faces seemed a bit better in HV.And EE is at least 5 years old.

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Unread postby fly away » 11 Dec 2006, 17:19

Alamar wrote: Hopefully others will cut me some slack and say that it is reasonable [for me] not to buy any expansions until I see an AI with tweaks that I feel shows that UBI / Nival actually gives a darn.
Yeah, I really want to try the dwarves etc in HoF, but I am not buying it. Even if it cost 1$ I wouldn't. Unfortunately, I see more and more people putting up with it, so that Ubisoft must be thinking that the game is actually very good... :|

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Unread postby ThunderTitan » 11 Dec 2006, 18:37

fly away wrote:Unfortunately, I see more and more people putting up with it, so that Ubisoft must be thinking that the game is actually very good... :|
Well JJ seems to think that it's very good, and that we're pissed just coz it isn't extraordinary.
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Unread postby fly away » 11 Dec 2006, 18:58

ThunderTitan wrote:
fly away wrote:Unfortunately, I see more and more people putting up with it, so that Ubisoft must be thinking that the game is actually very good... :|
Well JJ seems to think that it's very good, and that we're pissed just coz it isn't extraordinary.
Well, to be fair I must say that I like most parts of the game, but a few flaws don't let me enjoy it as much as I'd like to. It's like if I had a new BMW with all the features possible that would only drive at 30 km/hour.

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Unread postby Jolly Joker » 11 Dec 2006, 19:19

fly away wrote: Unfortunately, I see more and more people putting up with it, so that Ubisoft must be thinking that the game is actually very good... :|
It looks like I'm not the only one who finds it good.

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Unread postby Elvin » 11 Dec 2006, 19:32

No reason to get complacent when you can get more! :D
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Unread postby Jolly Joker » 11 Dec 2006, 19:43

Right. I'm really looking forward to patch 1.5 and the second expansion! :)

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Unread postby Elvin » 11 Dec 2006, 19:57

You aren't the only one! I have some expectations from 1.5 but even if it's just the things I have seen mentioned it's totally worth it. From 1.3 the game has taken a good turn and it can only get better.
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Unread postby ThunderTitan » 11 Dec 2006, 20:04

Elvin wrote:it can only get better.
Well that's true... :devious:
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Unread postby Alamar » 14 Dec 2006, 15:39

I hope you guys are right that 1.5 will be an improvement over everything we've seen so far. If there are some AI tweaks [hero building, resource balancing, adventure AI, etc.] that show we're headed in the right direction I may have to grab an expansion pack.

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Unread postby ThunderTitan » 14 Dec 2006, 16:14

Alamar wrote:I hope you guys are right that 1.5 will be an improvement over everything we've seen so far.
It's way harder to make it worse.... :devil:
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Unread postby aulfgar » 20 Dec 2006, 03:13

ThunderTitan wrote:
Alamar wrote:I hope you guys are right that 1.5 will be an improvement over everything we've seen so far.
It's way harder to make it worse.... :devil:
And yet I feel that Nival can do the task. :D

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Unread postby winterfate » 20 Dec 2006, 04:57

Yes, that is Nival's forte :D. They find new ways to screw up parts of the game that are ok to begin with (I must admit that I envy their ability to do that; it does require some "skill" :devious:).

But, here's hoping that 1.5 is better :D (because that whole thing with the patches is starting to get :wall: ).
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Unread postby Deadguy118 » 20 Dec 2006, 23:45

The ultimate fault of nival is that they have sucky PR. The patches just don't feel like they do much beyond correct annoying bugs that should have been ironed out before it went gold

sorry to put blizzard into this but if you look at some of the more recent Diablo II and Warcraft III patches they are more about content and fine tweaking than bugfixing

also I don't think I will get HOF due to the fact that I only have 512MB RAM and I hate waiting 3-4 minutes just for the computer to take their turns in mid game.
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